Weiss Nilly, Mardo Elite, Avidan Galia
Department of Psychology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, POB 653, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel.
Department of Psychology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, POB 653, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel.
Neuropsychologia. 2016 Mar;83:63-75. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.07.028. Epub 2015 Jul 29.
A major question in the domain of face perception is whether faces comprise a distinct visual category that is processed by specialized mechanisms, or whether face processing merely represents an extreme case of visual expertise. Here, we examined O.H, a 22 years old woman with congenital prosopagnosia (CP), who despite her severe deficits in face processing, acquired superior recognition skills for horses. To compare the nature of face and horse processing, we utilised the inversion manipulation, known to disproportionally affect faces compared to other objects, with both faces and horses. O.H's performance was compared to data obtained from two control groups that were either horse experts, or non-experts. As expected, both control groups exhibited the face inversion effect, while O.H did not show the effect, but importantly, none of the participants showed an inversion effect for horses. Finally, gaze behaviour toward upright and inverted faces and horses was indicative of visual skill but in a distinct fashion for each category. Particularly, both control groups showed different gaze patterns for upright compared to inverted faces, while O.H presented a similar gaze pattern for the two orientations that differed from that of the two control groups. In contrast, O.H and the horse experts exhibited a similar gaze pattern for upright and inverted horses, while non-experts showed different gaze patterns for different orientations. Taken together, these results suggest that visual expertise can be acquired independently from the mechanisms mediating face recognition.
面孔感知领域的一个主要问题是，面孔是否构成一个由专门机制处理的独特视觉类别，或者面孔处理是否仅仅代表视觉专长的一个极端例子。在这里，我们研究了O.H.，一名22岁的患有先天性面孔失认症（CP）的女性，她尽管在面孔处理方面存在严重缺陷，但却获得了卓越的马匹识别技能。为了比较面孔和马匹处理的本质，我们运用了倒置操作，众所周知，与其他物体相比，倒置操作对面孔的影响更大，我们将其应用于面孔和马匹。将O.H.的表现与从两个对照组获得的数据进行比较，这两个对照组分别是马匹专家或非专家。正如预期的那样，两个对照组都表现出面孔倒置效应，而O.H.没有表现出这种效应，但重要的是，没有参与者表现出马匹倒置效应。最后，对直立和倒置的面孔及马匹的注视行为表明了视觉技能，但每个类别都有独特的方式。特别是，两个对照组对直立面孔和倒置面孔表现出不同的注视模式，而O.H.对这两种方向表现出相似的注视模式，这与两个对照组不同。相比之下，O.H.和马匹专家对直立和倒置马匹表现出相似的注视模式，而非专家对不同方向表现出不同的注视模式。综上所述，这些结果表明视觉专长可以独立于介导面孔识别的机制而获得。
